Originally published at: Liz Cheney on Cruz: "a real man would be defending his wife, and his father, and the Constitution" | Boing Boing
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She’s right, but his supporters won’t care…
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Normally I don’t have a lot of time to consider right-wingers’ pronouncements on what makes a “real man”, but I suppose Cancun Cruz does. Replace the term with “decent human being” and Cheney isn’t wrong here.
True. That millions of Texans continue to vote for this objectively unlikeable slimeball remains an enduring mystery for me.
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But Cheney chose “real man” specifically for Ted Cruz and his audience. Liz Cheney was a year ahead of me at UChicago Law and in a sea of smart people, she was off-the-charts smart. You may not care for her or her politics, but if you’ll take this (sort of) right-wingers pronouncement on this, I promise you the words she chose there were entirely deliberate and much more effective where it was aimed.
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Cruz so desperately wants to be perceived as a “real man”. Or even a “person people like”. He will do literally anything to chase popularity.
I LOOOOVVVVEEEEE Aidy Bryant plays him on SNL.
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She’s still an asshole. 
Just less so than Ted Cruz. I’m done with the whole lot of them, frankly. The Cheney family are one of the groups that got us where we are today. Who cares if she’s “smart” when her family materially contributed to making the world a measurable worse place.
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As noted above, I’m sure that Ted Cruz does spend a lot of time worrying about the traditional definitions of what makes a “real man”. It’s obvious Cheney knows this (one doesn’t have to be a genius), but those of us not mired in conservatism can still agree with her about this sweaty creep by swapping out the terms.
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I think Cheney is significantly correct.
First, the issue of causation. Like we all know a wildfire needs both dry conditions and an igniting event, an elected official bowing to fascism requires both an authoritarian follower personality type and a fascist to command them. Cruz was just the right “set of conditions” before Donald Trump came along, that doesn’t take away the importance of the igniting event.
Second, there is the issue of the multiple ideas of what “broke” means. You can break a clock meaning the clock doesn’t work anymore. You can “break” a horse meaning to train it to do a job. I think if we think of an idea between those two, it fits.
Third, I think Cheney is acknowledging that since Trump came to power people got important new data on Ted Cruz. We might think that everyone always ought to have known that you shouldn’t elect Ted Cruz, but clearly people didn’t. Cheney is saying that something has changed, the (correct) implication being that if you haven’t reassessed what you think of Cruz since Cruz bowed down before a person who said Cruz’s wife was ugly and Cruz’s father was a murderer, that you might want to reassess. And people should.
Lastly, I think there is a deeper truth that Ted Cruz’s feelings should be hurt. That a universe in which a person who has behaved as Ted Cruz has does not feel bad about themselves is sort of a false universe, waiting to come into the truth. So if Cheney managed to hurt Cruz by comparing Cruz to a horse trained to do a job, or reminding Cruz that Cruz has fully substituted Cruz’s own interests and will for those of someone who said Cruz’s dad killed JFK… that is it’s own special kind of true.
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Yes. There’s “broken” in the sense of being damaged and bent, which Cruz always was. There’s also "broken "in the sense of someone breaking one’s spirit and subjugating them, which happened when Biff made Ted his craven thrall after the GOP primary. Cheney is talking about the second sense, but I doubt she ever cared about the first sense (primarily because his broken personality made him a natural for the party they once shared).
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Because it was germane to Gracchus’ point about the words she chose.
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Does it really indicate high intelligence that one concludes “hey, this jerk subscribes to a BS worldview, therefore I’ll frame my insult to him in those terms”? Especially if, as I suspect from her history as a conservative, Cheney herself doesn’t think that worldview is entirely BS.
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It’s precisely why she’s leaning into it, of course.
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Which isn’t particularly smart, either. The only people in the party she’s trying to reclaim who care about “real man” patriarchal norms are cultists who won’t listen to her anyhow. Like the viciously funny ads put out by The Lincoln Project, all it ends up being is amusing to an audience like us that can’t help the neoCons and moneyCons re-take the GOP and that isn’t particularly interested in helping them.
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“a real man would be defending his wife, and his father, and the Constitution”
He’ll need to cuddle up with his emotional support assault rifle after hearing that.
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I think Liz Cheney was going for a twofer, to paint Trump as an asshole and Cruz as a feckless, spineless toady. She pretty much nailed it.
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The crooked politicians wave “Constitution” and “freedom” around as mantras to attract people. (I do not mean Cheney here.)
The actual meaning has been lost to such groups but you must mouth the proper sentiments just as the Chinese had to have a portrait of Mao in their living room or be suspect and the North Koreans one of Dear Leader pretty much in every room.
Like Germany in the 30’s we will likely vote in our own dictator and watch what is left of the Republic die and be buried.
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It’s a wild world where Liz Cheney who voted with Trump basically 100% of the time is now vilified and called a socialist RINO and has people on the left falling over themselves to defend her.
She’s still a Cheney, she’s still far-right, and she’s still against everything we stand for and value. It just so happens that she is also not so brainwashed by the Trump cult that she can’t call out the lies and hypocrisy of her fellow party members. That shouldn’t be commendable - that should be fucking table stakes.
It just shows how utterly fucked our country is right now.
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Not all people on the left…
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Not as such. Which is definitely something to be aware of. Beware of enablers.
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The more relevant comparison is that approximately 30% of the electorate (roughly matching the Know-Nothing 27%) of any country seems perfectly willing to vote for an eliminationist fascist party. And at least 50% of the citizenry doesn’t vote at all.
The real challenge is how to strengthen the institutions of liberal democracy to ensure that this minority doesn’t get to impose their choice on everyone else. Unfortunately in the American system, one party’s establishment* is working hard to undermine and twist those institutions while the other party establishment is unable or unwilling to stop them.
So yes, beware of enablers of all sorts.
[* which, with the co-operation of the Cheneys, has spent years welcoming in the Know-Nothings]
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